A Voice to Still All His Others

Eventually he found himself in Mungadze's Texas offices in 2001. They'd met years ago, in 1980, when both were running track in college.

At first, Mungadze says, he was convinced that his patient was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But over months of therapy, that diagnosis changed.

"He started talking about voices in his head," Mungadze remembers. "Those voices would become people." In time, Mungadze says, he was able to identify 12 different personalities. "He would switch right in front of me. I knew it wasn't Herschel. They went by different names. They'd talk to me about Herschel. They told me that he needed help."

But help was hard to find. Mungadze, who specializes in DID, knew that Walker needed more than their weekly therapy sessions. He sent him to an outpatient rehab facility in another state. Through therapy, group sessions and the support of his family, Walker eventually learned to control the disparate voices in his head, without medication.

Writing became part of his therapy. He'd always written, poetry or whatever was on his mind. Now he wrote everything down, everything, until he had 1,500 pages of memoir. He decided that the best thing he could do was to share his story with others. So he pared those 1,500 pages into a book. (He says he hired writers Gary Brozek and Charlene Maxfield to help him with his grammar and spelling.)

"I used to have all these fragments in me," says Walker, who now owns a number of businesses in Dallas, including a food service company. But the Speaker and the others have been put on mute.

"I control this car now," he says. "I'm at the wheel."